George Clooney will make his Broadway debut next year
George Clooney will make his Broadway debut next spring in a world-premiere stage adaptation of his own 2005 film Good Night, and Good Luck, a portrait of the storied CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow, who helped turned the tide against McCarthyism in the 1950s.
In the movie version—which was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director—Clooney played Murrow’s colleague Fred Friendly. This time around, he will step into the lead role originated by David Strathairn. “I am honored, after all these years, to be coming back to the stage and especially to Broadway, the art form and the venue that every actor aspires to,” Clooney said.
Clooney will cowrite the play with Grant Heslov, his screenwriting partner for the film. He will not, however, be directing the Broadway production; it will be helmed instead by David Cromer (The Band’s Visit), one of the theater world’s most reliably intelligent and insightful directors. “Edward R. Murrow operated from a kind of moral clarity that feels vanishingly rare in today’s media landscape,” Cromer said. “There was an immediacy in those early live television broadcasts that today can only be effectively captured on stage, in front of a live audience.”
The film was released in black and white. The Broadway production will be in color.
Good Night, and Good Luck will open in Spring 2025 at one of the 17 Broadway theaters owned by the Shubert Organization. Additional details about the production have not yet been announced.
